Take it on Faith
by sparkletasia
Summary: Late at night, Derek struggles with his faith. Written for falcon-121's One-Shot Fridays.


**A.N~**_ Hello! This is a song fic written for Falcon 121's one shot Fridays. The song I used was Turn it Off by Paramore. I LOVE reviews & own nothing. Enjoy :D_

Taking it on Faith

_**I scraped my knees while I was praying**_

_**And found a demon in my safest haven**_

Derek Morgan did not do church. Not anymore. As it was, he barely did faith. His job, religion, even people were all things he regularly doubted. It took a lot to gain even a hint of his trust, and once broken it was irreparable.

This was not something he particularly liked about himself, but it wasn't something he'd chosen. It had been forced upon him by somebody he'd… trusted. A hollow laugh followed this thought, although the irony wasn't remotely amusing. Used and abused as he was, the notion that Carl Buford walked free and among other boys like him was something that had eaten at Derek since he'd left, a nauseous feeling that swept over him in quiet, dark moments.

Last week, he had received the news that Buford had been sentenced to seven years in prison for crimes against children. Derek breathed a little easier now knowing the man was away from the boys, out of the community centre. Didn't mean he was out of his head though. Apparently that ghost was here to stay. He drank a lot that night, but alcohol didn't wash away the memories, the shame, the hatred or the guilt. Apparently they were staying too. As were the nightmares, which would visit occasionally, filled with hands and lies and tears landing on Derek's pillow. He'd often mused that no matter how big you grew, tears stayed the same size. Maybe he'd grown into his.

_**Seems like it's getting harder to believe in anything**_

_**Than just to get lost in all my selfish thoughts**_

Now a new problem had cropped up, leading Derek to wander aimlessly around the city, as though looking for a solution in the brightly lit streets and dark, dingy alleys. Desiree's new baby, Charlotta, her christening was next week. In the very church that he'd prayed his heart out in everyday, where he'd begged, he'd pleaded for an answer. He loved Lotta, he really did. She gave him hope. But how could he go back there? He had no desire to feel like that thirteen year old boy again, lost and bewildered by what life was handing him.

_**I **__**want to know what it'd be like**_

_**To find perfection in my pride**_

_**To see nothing in the light**_

Because what hurt the most was the fact that he knew there was something else out there, he had never doubted that there was a higher power. Derek had _never_ wavered on that. But it had stung; it had cut him to the core to learn that whatever it was, it didn't care about him.

_**I'll turn it off, in all my spite**_

_**In all my spite, I'll turn it off**__**  
**_

_**And the worst part is**_

_**Before it gets any better**_

_**We're headed for a cliff**_

So he'd gone in the other direction entirely. He left the church, and he tried to lose his baggage in partying and various strings of meaningless encounters. Derek questioned any one in authority; he never hesitated to speak his mind, to voice his doubts. He grew out of it all, mostly, the vestiges were still hanging with him. Mostly the authority issues, which weren't inherently bad… but they weren't assets either. He knew he'd earned the moniker 'Doubting Derek', he knew of the whispers that followed some of his more vocal outbursts.

He was Derek Morgan, outspoken, fun loving, the playboy of the FBI. The girls wanted to be with him, the guys wanted to be him. But every now and again a crack would show, as if just to remind him that this wasn't all of him, to remind him that the past still lurked, just out of reach. The problem with cracks is that they spread, branching off one another and appearing slowly, marring the smooth surface. The problem with cracks is that they only get bigger, and that's when the hidden leaks through.

_**And in the free fall**__**  
**__**I will realize I'm better off**_

_**When I hit the bottom**_

Rock bottom had come, in the form of Carl Buford's arrival back in his life. Framed for murder with his own team investigating him, Derek couldn't see his way out of this one. This man, this insidious creature was once again disrupting and attempting to ruin his life. And he couldn't tell a soul why.

He'd thought about it, every time his mother had hugged him and said that he could tell her anything. He'd thought about it alright. But every time he opened his mouth to voice it, something closed it again.

_Our little secret._ To this day Derek winced at the memory of these words.

But finally, his silence had broken. First to James, his breath fogging the air in the cold, and then to Buford, to the monster himself. It poured then, uncontrollable, everything he'd saved up over the last twenty years. All of it. From there, it could only get better, he told himself. It was no longer poisoning him from the inside out.

_**The tragedy, it seems unending**_

_**I'm watching everyone I looked up to break and bending**_

_**We're taking shortcuts and false solutions**_

_**Just to come out the hero**_

But still, he couldn't reconcile his beliefs, which seemed to have taken a permanent blow. His job only seemed to add to the questions, to the doubt in his mind. How could this much evil exist in the world, with a supposedly benevolent eye watching over us all? How were they all God's children, how were they loved like his own when he still had to watch parents identify their children, when he found boxes of one hundred shoes, muddied, bloodied and discarded all because someone thought they were better? It couldn't work. It shouldn't happen. Derek's mind physically couldn't wrap itself around it.

_**Well, I can see behind the curtain **_

_**(I can see it now)**_

_**The wheels are cranking, turning**_

All this brought him back to the question. How did he go back? Or even, could he go back? Could he smile politely, and pretend like everything was fine? Derek had never been that sort of person. To go back, he would have to have solved this; he would have to have an answer of some kind, no matter what it was.

He noticed that he was now opposite a large park, not too far from where he worked. Good, at least he still knew where he stood physically.

Derek knew that there were some very, very good things in his life. There was his mother, who supported him no matter what. Who had stayed up all night to talk to him and hold him when he finally told her after Buford's arrest. His sisters, who kicked his ass on a regular basis, but would rip anybody else who tried to shreds. Baby Lotta. His team, from Hotch the mother hen (although he'd never say it to his face), to Reid, the skinny little brother he never had. Emily and JJ, more sisters who operated under the same principle as the other two. Rossi, who challenged him, provoked him, argued with him… but always had his back. Garcia, well. There weren't really words for that particular relationship; it didn't want to fit into any categories it seemed.

_**It's all wrong, the way we're working**_

_**Towards a goal that's non-existent**_

_**It's not existent, but we just keep believing**_

They all knew they were kidding themselves that they could ever stop all the killers, all the monsters, all the Bufords. But having that little bit of… faith, well, it helped. Derek realised that he had never truly lost that. Come close, certainly. But never entirely.

Then there was his team. He questioned them, often bordering on obnoxious with it. But they had faith in him. There was that word again. And although he voiced his doubts, he realised he had faith in them too. Maybe not that they would always make the right decisions, but at least that they would always have the right reasons.

He had faith in his family. He knew that there was nothing that could worm its way in between them, that although they might argue (and when they did, all hell broke loose), they never let the sun set on it. They always came back, and they always came through. He had faith in baby Lotta. He had to, or what _was_ the point of his job? He was trying to make the world safer for children like her.

So maybe Derek had a lot more faith then he thought. This was an odd thought, and it stopped him in his tracks. He was a long way from being full of it, but he'd managed some. _Some_, over the _none_ he'd always assumed he had. The thought felt odd, a shock to the system.

Maybe he could go back. He had faith after all. Just in… people. A select few people. But it was better than nothing. It was a different kind than he'd ever considered, but it was something. Wasn't it?

Derek Morgan walked off, the church he'd never even realised he was in front of falling back into the darkness behind him.


End file.
